25.12.02
"your snakeskin suit and your alligator boots, you don't need a laundry you can take 'em to the vet." -joe strummer 1979

some people call it the "black spot phenomenon". when a young man (or woman) reaches a certain age in his early teens, his family ceases to be able to provide all of his needs for him. he becomes restless and in need of stimulation his parents are usually too busy or out of step to provide. in short, there is a "black spot" in his life that needs filling, and the most powerful thing he comes in contact with, the thing that he feels he can identify with the most, fills that black spot and becomes more powerful than anything else in his life up to that point. and for many, many people, that thing is music. for me it was punk rock music, and more specifically it was the clash. from the age of 13 until 16 or so, the clash had a hold on me like no other band before or since. when you're that age you get so into the music that you literally forget yourself while you're listening to it- you crank up the stereo and, in a way, become the artist you're listening to as you sing along with the words you know so well. and i guess that when i put on my clash albums, day after day, i would become joe strummer for a while. mick jones was alright, but joe was the one i identified with: he had a cool, snarling attitude, was unapologetically political and (in my opinion) wrote some of the most important music of the 20th century, yet he didn't take himself too seriously. his sense of humour and humility came through in all of his songs, and he stood by his convictions. in fact, conviction was the word most often used to describe the clash, and despite the fact that they became quite popular and even had a few top 40 hits, they never lost it in their fans' eyes. and while i'd started moving on to other groups and forms of music by the time i was 17, no other band would ever duplicate the all-encompassing influence they had had on my life. a huge part of that influence was just hoping that some day i would be half as cool as joe strummer. joe died on the evening of december 22nd of a heart attack- he was a young 50 years old. in a year that saw us lose john entwistle, joey ramone and jam master jay, this one hit the hardest. r.i.p. joe- you're gone but you will never be forgotten.

20.12.02
some of you may have noticed that i changed the home page a bit- it's no longer just an image; there's now a bit of text on there too. the reason, besides the fact that i was getting bored with the old way it was set up, is that i've hooked up with a company that is promising to get me some very hot search engine rankings, and they informed me that i've got to have at least a little text on the home page or some engines might not list it. you see, zerokin, zeroboutique.com is what is politely reffered to as a "backwoods" site: nobody's heard of us because nobody can find us. you should consider yourself lucky, because we have virtually no search engine presence and our traffic is pretty much lame. that being said, we still manage to sell a few t-shirts. of course it helps that we get designs submitted to us by some of the world's most incredible artists and that we print on hot gear like american apparel shirts. but you see folks, it's not enough. the bills are getting paid, but just. one bad week can set us back a month, and it's frustrating. so we're hoping that going with this company will boost our profile, get us into more stores and maybe enable us to do some print advertising. your secret little site might not be a secret for much longer...my apologies to mehgun and anyone else who may have tried to look for her set of pictures up until several days ago. i thought i'd uploaded them, but like a shmuck i didn't bother to actually check to see if i had, and it was only last week when i discovered my error...i'll be taking some time off for christmas but should be able to get a pretty good update posted before the new year- new in review page, new graf & corruption page and maybe a new zerokid or two. then i will be embarking on a fairly ambitious update, one that will hopefully bring 30 new pieces and a bunch of new colors and styles to your beloved visualiser. visualise this: a year from now this site is going to be a freakin' monster...oh i discovered a really cool personals page: the nerve.com personals. everyone there seems to be at least to some degree be into reading good books, seeing good movies and having good sex. unfortunately there are only like 20 women on there in my area, but that's one a day for 3 weeks right?

18.12.02
i picked up an old henry miller book i hadn't looked at in about 10 years the other day. i had forgotten what a funny, interesting and inspiring writer he was (not to mention dirty as hell at times). so instead of my usual rant i thought i'd reproduce, for your edification, an excerpt from the rosy crucifixion: sexus book 2. enjoy.

"to confess, to whine, to complain, to commiserate always demands a toll. to sing doesn't cost you a penny. not only does it cost nothing- you actually enrich others. sing the praise of the lord, it is enjoined. aye, sing out! sing out, oh master builder! sing out, glad warrior! but, you quibble, how can i sing when the world is crumbling, when all about me is bathed in blood and tears? do you realize that the martyrs sang when they were being burned at the stake? they saw nothing crumbling, they heard no shrieks of pain. they sang because they were full of faith. who can demolish faith? who can wipe out joy? men have tried, in every age. but they have not succeeded. joy and faith are inherent in the universe. in growth there is pain and struggle; in accomplishment there is joy and exuberance; in fulfillment there is peace and serenity. between the planes and spheres of existence, terrestrial and superterrestrial, there are ladders and lattices. the one who mounts, sings. he is made drunk and exalted by unfolding vistas. he ascends sure-footedly, thinking not of what lies below, should he slip and lose his grasp, but of what lies ahead. everything lies ahead. the way is endless, and the farther one reaches the more the road opens up. the bogs and quagmires, the marshes and sinkholes, the pits and snares, are all in the mind. they lurk in waiting, ready to swallow one up the moment one ceases to advance. the phantasmal world is the world which has not been fully conquered over. it is the world of the past, never of the future. to move forward clinging to the past is like dragging a ball and chain. the prisoner is not the one who has committed a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over. we are all guilty of crime, the great crime of not living life to the full. but we are all potentially free. we can stop thinking of what we have failed to do and do whatever lies within our power. what these powers that are in us may be noone has truly dared to imagine. that they are infinite we will realize the day we admit to ourselves that imagination is everything. imagination is the voice of daring. if there is anything god-like about god it is that he dared to imagine everything. -henry miller

12.12.02
a good crush can ruin your entire life. i didn't get my first one until junior high, and it lasted from the first day of grade 7 til the last day of grade 9. looking back, it may have been largely due to the fact that vanessa had a prematurely-developed bosom, but there are a lot of intangibles at work when you have a crush on somebody. i just... wanted her. and part of me thought/knew i could never have her. she later told me that she had had a crush on me too, but i know she only said that to make me feel better..... i wasn't to experience another genuine crush until several years later when i lived in vancouver. people have asked me "if you hated vancouver so much, why did you stay there for nearly 5 years?" well, i had a band that i really enjoyed playing in, and i thought we might have a chance of doing something if we stuck at it. i usually had at least 4 or 5 items in hock at any given time, usually to help feed my huge appetite for bc skunk, and i didn't want to leave town before getting them out. but the real reason i was there for so long was krista. a girl i met about 8 months after moving there, she was to dominate my thoughts and many of my actions for much of the next 3 years. like no other girl before or since, krista made me feel like a giddy little kid at a waterslide, like a puppy having his tummy rubbed. like a full-grown man behaving like an idiot. the worst part is, we went out a few times, and i thought i actually had a chance with her. me, a mere mortal, with a goddess. well, maybe i would have if i had been able to form coherent sentences in her presence. but i had mentally elevated her to such a lofty pedestal in my mind that i turned into a gibbering nervous wreck every time i saw her. but god, how i wanted her. still do, in fact..... there was, however, to be one more crush in my life- this one less intense but still pretty consuming. i met marlene on the bus shortly after moving to halifax and was smitten. i had known her brother for years, which you'd think would have given me an in, but i think that was actually a demerit point in her book. books- that was what we had in common. canadian writers like margaret laurence, mordecai richler, alice munro and margaret atwood gave us something to talk about on the bus rides home from town every day. finally after about 4 months i worked up the nerve to put a valentine's card inside a book i'd borrowed and given back to her. the card had my number on it, but she never called. later, i moved into town and she got another job so our bus rides were cut short, but i called her a few times and we actually had a date set up at one point which never materialized. i think she moved to ottawa.... so why am i writing this? i just had a dream about krista and it got me to thinking about crushes again. about how part of their tantalizing nature is that the object of them always seems to be unattainable. in fact, if you were to actually start seeing someone you had a crush on, part of the magic would be gone. but then, i wouldn't know. isn't unrequited love supposed to be the sweetest love of all? that's what i keep telling myself.

07.12.02
i had to go to the mall today to get a couple of things- no, not christmas gifts, i don't start worrying about those until at least the 15th- just a sewing kit and a pillowcase from the dollar store (don't ask). there's something about malls that brings out the worst in humanity- i can only spend maybe maximum an hour in one before i start getting really sweaty and claustrophobic and i need to get out. when i was married my ex would drag me to the mall all the time and it would take us forever to get out, then she couldn't understand why i'd get so irritable. how could i explain that the mere act of being in a mall is an insult to my intelligence and humanity, indeed that it degrades all of humanity? of course that sounds preposterous, but that's the best way to describe the way malls make me feel. the only thing good about today's trip is that i saw 2 really cool books in coles that i took the liberty of perusing at some length- one being "rolling with the stones" by bill wyman (i'm on a big stones kick lately- anything pre-1981) and the other "the journals of kurt cobain". i've been keeping a journal off and on, mostly on, since i was about 8, so i find other peoples' journals fascinating. especially someone as messed up and brilliant as kurt. so there are 2 more for the "when i'm rich enough to buy whatever i want" list (or excellent christmas gifts- hint to family)...another book i found out about this week that i just absolutely had to have is called sesame street unpaved. it's sort of an insider's look at the first 30 years of the show i guess and supposed to be excellent. calls to a few local booksellers revealed that it's been out of print since 1998, but lo and behold i found it on ebay for only 10 bucks so it's already on its way to me. i can't wait!! i'm 32 so i grew up during sesame street's "golden age" of the seventies. i can't really express how important the show was to me growing up. when the muppet show hit the air i was 6 years old and in my glory. my cousins and i were really into puppets and used to make our own, and even planned on doing it as a career when we were older. jim henson was a huge inspiration for me. unfortunately for the puppets, i discovered punk rock only a few years later. i'm actually working on a new web site that is muppet-related, it's pretty hush-hush right now but it will be launched before the new year...oh yeah, if you hadn't noticed, i've extended the christmas shopping deadline by one day, so you now have until monday december 9th at midnight (give or take a few hours) to fill your cart with zeroboutique joy. talk to ya soon.........

01.12.02
updating can be pretty time-consuming, but this was a fairly large one without actually adding any new art. a new in review page, the return of graf and corruption and of course the wutznu page took up the better part of 3 days to put together, not to mention all the hard groundwork of snapping pics of graffiti and listening to cds. anyway, it's done now and i can relax a little bit...i went out the other night and actually talked to a real girl- one i hadn't met before! if i can do it, there's hope for all of us geeks. mind you, it didn't really go anywhere, but at 32 i've kind of grown out of the desire for one-night stands- they're just too messy. so why, after living in a city for 5 years, am i still finding it hard to go out to a bar and meet people? well, it has a lot to do with the mental conditioning of 15 years of smoking pot. in case you didn't already know, marijuana can make you kind of anti-social, and if you're already predisposed to be that way (like i am), it basically turns you into a hermit. so when i moved here i had about 3 close friends, and 5 years later i have exactly 1 (the other 2 moved away or gave up on me). so, having quit pot 4 months ago, i'm now fighting to undo all that conditioning. it's not easy, but every girl i talk to or old friend i get together with is a small victory to re-gain something you take for granted as a teenager: a social life. i want mine back. (ps if anyone sees me around halifax please feel free to come up and introduce yourself, even if it's only to tell me how much you hate my whiny blog. as long as i'm talking to someone in a public setting, i don't look quite as pathetic. i'm the tall guy. no, the really tall guy).

26.11.02
thought i'd just check in with everybody before starting the next update, which will probably take 3 or 4 days. there's a new zerokid named meghun i think you're all going to like, i will be posting info about what stores our gear is currently available in and, for you fans of the ill-fated end of the world journal i've decided to bring back graf and corruption, which was our old regular feature on graffiti, primarily in the halifax area. i've now got a backlog of flix, since when i see a beautiful piece i just need to take a picture of it before some sadistic building-owner pressure sprays it off....i'm off the breyer's cookie d'oh! ice cream for the next little while. a recent visit home confirmed that i have gained like 15 pounds in the last 4 months, most of it directly attributable to the (minimum) 2 bowls of the stuff i plowed through every single day since july. a potbelly on anyone is unattractive, but on an otherwise skinny 6 foot 8 male, it's downright disturbing. plus, all my pants are too tight now and i'm way too cheap to go buy more...well i'm gonna wrap this up so i can sit down and enjoy triumph of the underdog, a biography about jazz legend charles mingus and supposedly the greatest jazz film in existence. time was a few years ago jazz was all i would listen to. essentially, it was a way to distinguish myself from my friends, many of whom were wasting their youth listening to garbage like white zombie. but the nice thing about jazz is, it doesn't grow old or stale. in fact, it refuses to. i can pop in my charlie parker cd, the same one i've been listening to for 12 years, and still hear something new every time. even though i'm more into hip hop these days, jazz is like an old girlfriend you just can't give up, and who always takes you back. and i'm rambling again...

19.11.02
sorry i haven't written in a while but i was away for a few days. doing the "family thing", which in my family amounts to a lot of booze, gossip and meat products. it was lots of fun though & i'm glad to be back in haltown. going home is always a good reminder of why you left in the first place...so what else to report? obviously the calendars are ready and they do look tres hot if i may say so myself. and no, even though i compared them to the playboy calendar, which as a rule i buy every year, there is no nudity in our calendars. just a lot of incredibly cute female zerokidz cavorting around in our sweet gear...this probably won't happen before christmas, but i did track down a supplier that carries camoflage t-shirts and so they will be available on the site by the new year, along with other new colors of t-shirts, baseball shirts, ringers and the return of our wonderful tank tops. should be good fun as the brits say...so it's been a good 5 or 6 months since the last time i got laid, and even that was just re-tag sex with the ex. i know, i need to get out there, but it's hard when you're into things that none of your friends are into, so you wind up going to a bar alone and you're already such a terminal wallflower that it becomes even more hopeless. but hey, i was chatting up one of my sister's friends pretty smoothly on the weekend (not that i was trying to pick her up, mind you- she's 10 years younger than me) so maybe i'm not completely without charm. i am, however, completely without sexual gratification. watch this space for more...

10.11.02
i just passed my 3 month anniversary for quitting pot. this is significant for me, because only once in the last 15 years since i first started imbibing tetrahydracannibinol was i able to quit longer than 3 months, and even then i only made it for 4 & 1/2 months. so how do i feel? well, pretty good, but i'm not going to sit here and be all self-righteous about it. there are times when i miss it but then i just remember how confused and muddled it made me feel most of the time, how cranky i used to be the day after a late night of smoking, how my lungs used to ache and my memory was shot. i wouldn't say living with pot is impossible, but it just makes your life a lot more complicated than it has to be. sure it's great when you're in your late teens/early twenties and you don't have a whole lot of things to worry about- in fact, if you're stuck in a shitty minimum wage job it can actually be good because it helps you forget about your circumstances. but after a certain point it stops helping you and starts hurting you, and you can't really go back. of course, i'm only speaking from personal experience- i know some people can be moderate smokers and keep things in balance, but i don't really do anything in moderation, and smoking pot is no exception. so it's really nice to be getting a restful sleep at night, to not be snapping at people for stupid reasons, to be able to take in a full breath at any time of the day or night and to suddenly find myself remembering things from my childhood that i'd forgotten for years. here's to another 3 months, and beyond....

04.11.02
well the gods must have heard my whining down here the other day because over the last 4 days the site's gone right back to its normal level of sales, even a little better than average. that was scary though! when things slow down that drastically you realize just how important your customers are. i mean, i rely on people spending their hard-earned cash here to support myself, pay my child support and keep me in ice cream, and that's a little scary. i am going to be a lot less slack in the promotional area from now on...pretty cold in ns all of a sudden, but oh well. winter sucks but it too shall pass. i really don't mind snow that much- i even kind of like it up til february or so, then it starts getting a bit old. i'll still take it over rain any day. i lived in vancouver for almost 5 years and the last 3 years i was there consecutively broke all recorded rainfall records. it was like van was trying to get rid of me. well let me tell you, it worked...so i have some work to do on this site to get ready for the christmas season. for starters, the calendars are pretty much done so i'll be posting a page within 2 weeks or less. i'll also be posting info about deadlines for christmas shipping (just so you know, it will probably be december 6th or so). also have some really hot new zerokidz pics from 3 girls you've never seen before. i also need to get some more free shirts out to some of those gals you've come to know and love for some more pics. if you want to be a zerokid click here for more info...haven't been surfing as much lately because i'm on dial-up temporarily and it sucks. my dsl bill was getting out of control so i cut it off and went with the free aol deal until i can pay it off. but it's harder than i thought. streaming real audio is pretty much out of the question, so i can no longer listen to basementalism every week, and forget about downloading any mp3s or watching any cool mumbleboy or billy blob flash cartoons. i guess it's kind of fun pretending it's 1996 and 56K is a state-of-the-art connection. not.

31.10.02
it's been like a week and a half now with virtually no business on this site. and this comes on the heels of one of our best hot streaks ever. damn this internet and its nerve-wracking unpredictability! well, one of the problems was that my old site zero23.com was down for a few days, and i had a bunch of gateway pages on there which were placing pretty highly on some of the engines and, apparently, bringing in most of my traffic. because it just done up and died one day and it took me 2 or 3 more days to figure it out. by the time i got it back up i think it may have been too late, because the business just hasn't come back yet. fuck.
running a business is incredibly hard on the nerves, and i still haven't decided which is worse- working as an indentured slave for some asshole you hate or trying to get your own thing off the ground and wondering whether or not you'll eat next month. the former has its securities but it's a dead end, while the latter is nice because the sky's the limit but if you lose it you're twice as fucked. if i had had any insight into the incredible extremes of stress that running zero has put me through over the last 4 years, i really can't say whether or not i would have gone through with it. i mean back in march things got so bad at one point i was on my knees in my office, bawling my eyes out after having thrown my chair into a light fixture. and i'm not a man that cries easily.
but then of course when things start to go a little better it's so easy to think that they'll just keep climbing until the logical conclusion is reached and i'm in a whirpool surrounded by doting blond bunnies. but life is a lot more complicated than all that. anyway this little episode has kind of opened my eyes and i'm getting serious about search engine submission and other forms of promo- i'm notoriously lax in these areas. if there are any marketing geniuses out there i'd love to hear your suggestions...
just please god, don't make me have to go back to work. not yet.

28.10.02
so i've decided to give the "blog" section of this site its own, separate page for several reasons. for one, i always felt a little fraudulent calling it a "blog" since a blog, or weblog, is supposed to be updated more frequently than every second week, is by definition supposed to detail one's web surfing activities (amongst other things) and, at least i think, should be a little on the juicy side, if only occasionally. but since i always felt that i kind of had to keep it short and sweet over on the wutznu page, and i do so love to ramble, i thought i'd just put the whole damn thing over here on its own section. so welcome aboard, i hope you're not bored.
i recently got a computer set up at home for the first time in a long time and i've been doing a lot more surfing than i ever did at the office. actually, it's the first time in about 5 years that i've spent more than an hour at a time on the internet for sheer pleasure, and it's been pretty fun overall. i started by visiting some of my old favorites like seanbaby.com, which still makes me laugh out loud. unfortunately sean's a little lax in the update department lately, but he's got such a huge backlog of funny material that it would take weeks to go through it all. anyway so i decided to try my luck with an online dating service, an ostensibly "free" one called lavalife (you've probably heard of it). i saw a few cute prospects on there, but by the time i actually worked up enough nerve to try and instant message one of them, i realized that the only "free" thing you can do on lavalife is "send someone a smile" to let you know you're interested. unless you buy credits you can't even exchange e-mail addresses. bloody hell! i'm going to start my own personals page right here instead. the only difference is, membership is absolutely free if you're a female, and i'm the only guy. so don't bother joining if you're not interested in at least having sex with me. here are my stats...

zblog personals name: jj height: 6'8" proportions: proportional occupation: self-absorbed hobbies: self-gratification why i joined zblog personals: sheer desperation